


I Don't Mean It When I Tell You That I Don't Love You Anymore.

by thepointoftheneedle



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, F/M, FBI Agent Betty Cooper, Human Trafficking, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Non-Graphic Violence, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:16:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22776994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepointoftheneedle/pseuds/thepointoftheneedle
Summary: Special Agent Betty Cooper's cover is blown and she has to get the hell out of town.  Who can she turn to in her hour of need?  Her ex-boyfriend Jughead Jones?"She stopped once for gas and to buy two burner phones somewhere near Poughkeepsie.  She used one to send a text message to her field office, confirming that she was safe. Then she pulled out the SIM card and ground it to dust on the concrete under her heel.  Back on the road she opened the windows so the cold air could keep her awake and turned on a pop music station.  She began to feel lighter the further she drove from Philly and even sang along as the sun rose.  Daylight really did put a much better complexion on everything. She was Special Agent Betty Cooper; she was alive and useful.  That was what really mattered, not the fact that her heart was irreparably broken or that she had inflicted the wound herself.  Not the fact that she had done something so wicked that she couldn’t ever let herself remember it."
Relationships: Archie Andrews/Veronica Lodge, Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 47
Kudos: 140





	1. What will I do when I don't have you to hold onto in the dark?

**Author's Note:**

> All the chapter headings come from a song by The Mountain Goats (I only listen to The Mountain Goats) called Oceanographer’s Choice. The whole album (Tallahassee) is about how sometimes people love each other but can’t make it work and trying to make it work just means you end up tearing lumps off each other. So this gets angsty…but if you’d ever met me you’d know that under the emo armour there beats a heart of pure schmalz. I’m not mawkish, I’m straight up mawk. So -SPOILERS -“all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.” (That’s Julian of Norwich, she wrote the earliest surviving book by a woman in English. Would she be writing fanfic if she was alive now? Probs.)

“Betty, you’re blown. Bug out! Right the hell now.”  
She could tell that Charles was panicking and that alone was enough to raise her heart rate. Charles never seemed to lose his cool. By the time she had cleared the two a.m. fog from her brain the call had ended, Charles had hung up and her feet were already hitting the carpet. She had a bug out bag in the back of the closet and she grabbed it as she pulled on leggings and a loose sweater. Hair tucked into a baseball hat, keys swiped from the hall table and out of the door. Eight minutes at most from the moment the phone had rung. 

Running down the stairs, she noticed the elevator was on its juddering way up. She had been right not to trap herself in a metal box with only one way in and out. Even half asleep she would never have been that dumb. She dropped her phone into a trashcan in the corner of the lobby and slipped out into the night, running past the SUV that she had been driving for the last few months and down a side street to an anonymous grey sedan. Keys into the ignition and out onto the road. Twelve minutes. Not too shabby, even if she said so herself.

Betty had been living in a state of almost constant tension for more than three years so the call from Charles was not unexpected. It was, she supposed, an occupational hazard. She would have to lay low for a few months before she could get back undercover with a new legend but she had gathered enough intel in the last six months to put away some fairly important players. It was not a total bust. There were girls who would soon be safe who would have been dead if it were not for her work. She was prepared to sacrifice a lot, maybe everything, for that. 

It was vital for an undercover agent to have a safe location that they could go to if the worst happened and their cover was compromised. Charles had warned her that he thought that the rot in the department might have exposed some of the safe houses that were generally used in such circumstances but Betty assured him that she had a location if she ever needed it. When she began to speak again he held up a hand to stop her. “Betty, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know anything that might make me dangerous to you. If you’re confident about it that’s good enough for me.” And Betty was confident. Other than her boss and half brother Charles, her best friend Veronica was now the only person in her life who knew what she did for a living in any detail. Even V’s husband Archie was in the dark. Betty had known him since childhood and if he knew the danger that she was exposed to everyday he would have been unable to cope. He’d probably blow her cover by boasting about his kick-ass best friend to the wrong person. Veronica knew that she needed to do what she did, that she didn’t see any other option and so she supported her. She supported her to the extent that when Betty had gone undercover the first time V had taken her aside and pressed a set of keys into her hand.  
“You remember the “Lodge Lodge” B?”

Of course she remembered. There had been board games, the most noxious jalapeño margaritas, a hot tub and a home invasion. And there had been Jughead, reading Raymond Carver, forgiving the stupid mistake she had made with Archie, laughing with her at the sound of bedsprings from the next room and loving her, constantly loving her. As always happened, when she allowed her thoughts to wander back to him, her eyes filled with tears and her heart seemed to grow too big for her to get air into her lungs. She gripped the steering wheel and forced him out of her head.

So yes, she remembered the Lodge Lodge at Shadow Lake. And she was on her way there now. Veronica had set up her own code on the security system and explained that her father had installed a state of the art panic room in the master suite after the unfortunate events that had occurred during her last ill fated stay. “Whenever you need it Betts. Archie and I don’t go. Bad memories. And Mom doesn’t like to go alone since Dad passed so it’s just standing empty. If you need it, go there and be safe.” 

Betty guessed the drive would take about four hours from Philadelphia, and away from her life as Liz who arranged counterfeit visas for girls from the Russian Federation so they could have a new life in the USA, a life which they soon found was much, much worse than what they left behind. She tried to listen to music but found that everything irritated her. She switched off the sound system and was plunged into the nostalgia that her thoughts about the cabin on the lake evoked. It was always Jughead that she thought about the most. It hurt so much but at moments like this she couldn’t stop prodding the wound. There was a kind of relief in the pain. He was the love of her life, there would never be anyone else and thinking about him was as near as she could ever be to him. She tried to imagine what he was doing right at that moment. He was virtually nocturnal so he was typing, she guessed. A hank of dark hair falling into his eyes and being pushed back with a sigh. His long fingers flying over the keys, occasionally reaching into a bag of chips. She could picture him sitting on an overstuffed couch, his laptop on a coffee table in front of him while something noisy played on the TV. He’d got used to working like that and had never seemed to be able to find his muse if he sat at a desk in a quiet room. They had lived together throughout their college years and she had always been amazed that he could concentrate in the noisiest environments while she needed perfect order to work. He would find her tearfully cleaning their tiny bathroom because she couldn’t write a paper on social control theories until she knew that the grout was clean. In contrast, quiet freaked him out. He was perfectly happy to write critical essays on Longfellow in a sports bar while Archie and his athletic department pals screamed at a huge flatscreen. 

Or perhaps he was in an all-night diner, devouring a hamburger. He probably had a paperback open in front of him. She craned closer in her imagination. What was it? Poe? Melville? Lovecraft, oh let it not be Lovecraft. Ah that was it, David Foster Wallace, of course. Her own thoughts made her laugh out loud. And yet… perhaps he actually was in bed. Perhaps his long lean limbs were wrapped around some pretty, lucky girl. She might be running her hands through his hair, whispering “Yes, oh Juggie yes” against his neck as he made her come with his fingers, his beautiful fingers. And he might be smiling down at her and telling her how much he loved her, with that catch in his voice that she had once imagined would always be for her. Great, now she was sobbing. She should have known better. She couldn’t afford self indulgence like that. Impatiently she swiped the back of her hand across her eyes and took a few deep breaths. She hoped he was with a girl. He deserved that. A lovely girl who knew how special he was and how fortunate she was to have him, who cared for him, who never made his life complicated or painful. And a dog. They had a dog that Jughead walked every evening before bed, who curled up with them at night. And they’d have a beautiful wedding, then there would be babies and a house with a swing set and he’d get to be eighty, vaguely remembering that he had loved another girl once but not really recalling her name. He’d be glad that his life had been just as it was. And that was good and she was happy. Because she decided to be.

She stopped once for gas and to buy two burner phones somewhere near Poughkeepsie. She used one to send a text message to her field office, confirming that she was safe. Then she pulled out the SIM card and ground it to dust on the concrete under her heel. Back on the road she opened the windows so the cold air could keep her awake and turned on a pop music station. She began to feel lighter the further she drove from Philly and even sang along as the sun rose. Daylight really did put a much better complexion on everything. She was Special Agent Betty Cooper; she was alive and useful. That was what really mattered, not the fact that her heart was irreparably broken or that she had inflicted the wound herself. Not the fact that she had done something so wicked that she couldn’t ever let herself remember it. So, onwards!

She arrived at the cabin just after seven a.m. There were birds singing in the treetops, the lake glinting beyond the house. The nostalgia was painful as she dragged her bag from the backseat but she shoved it down and straightened her shoulders as she put her key into the lock. She was alarmed to see that that there was a jacket on one of the hooks in the entryway, the fact that it was a Sherpa gave her a jolt of recollection. She wondered if the ghosts of their past were still here, waiting to take revenge on her. As she walked into the main reception room there was a soft thud from the kitchen. She silently drew her weapon and placed her back against the wall. That was when she saw it, as the air left her body in a great heaving sob. On the couch lay a battered grey beanie.

Betty recovered herself enough to holster her firearm. She turned to leave quietly before he heard her but it was too late. “Hey is someone here? Archie, is that you buddy?” He was there, standing in the doorway, wiping his hands on a towel, ready to smile. His face froze when he saw her. He looked like someone standing before a firing squad, anticipating pain. His hand flew into his hair, missing his hat. “Betts…is it…why?” He was simply too shocked to form a sentence, all his words had all deserted him.

“God Jug. I’m so sorry. I had no idea you were here. I’ll go. I’m sorry.” She was heading for the doorway as she spoke.  
“Wait. Wait. Why are you here? What’s going on?” He rushed to get ahead of her, to stand in front of the door.

“I had to get out of Dodge pretty urgently. V gave me the keys to the lodge ages ago and it seemed like the best place to be. But don’t worry. I’ll be on my way. Forget I was here.”

That made him let out an extraordinary noise. It was almost a laugh and almost a howl. “Yeah, I’ll just forget you were here. Easy. What do you mean you HAD to get out? Are you in danger?”

“Look Juggie, I’m really sorry. You don’t need this. I’m going. Enjoy your vacation.”  
He still stood in front of the door. He was five inches taller than her but she could easily move him if she needed to, not least because he would never touch her without her consent, but she didn’t trust herself to put a hand on him. She might never let go.

“Please Betty. Just tell me what’s happening. Let me make you some breakfast at least, before you go. Please…at least that.” She knew that she should leave. Staying would only be more painful in the long run but he was here, his eyes locked on hers in that familiar way, wanting to eat breakfast with her, and she simply lacked the power to walk past him this time. Her shoulders slumped and she nodded. 

She checked the security of doors and windows and activated the alarm system while he returned to the kitchen to prepare the food. By the time she was seated at the kitchen island he had turned out a perfect batch of blueberry pancakes and was starting to plate up crispy bacon. 

“So, this is new.” Betty began with a chuckle. “Up before noon, a substantial home cooked meal that includes fruit. What gives?”

“Well, it’s kind of a new regimen. Healthy eating, fresh air, daylight. I went for a run yesterday.”

“Wow, that’s great Juggie. Are you here alone?” She needed to be prepared if the pretty girl from her daydream was about to come down the stairs wearing only one of his shirts. She would probably need to rip her heart out through her chest first if she was going to have to see that.

“Yeah, Archie said he might drive up sometime but they’ve been pretty busy with the babies and he doesn’t feel right leaving Ronnie yet.”  
“Babies? She had babies?” Of course Ronnie had told her that she was pregnant as soon as she found out but that had been half a year ago, before Betty had gone undercover. She had hoped that she’d be back in time for the baby shower but it looked like that ship had sailed. She hadn’t even sent a gift. And it wasn’t just a baby- he’d said babies.

“Yeah, two little boys. Born almost six weeks early but doing so good. They were only in the NICU for a week. Fred and Forsythe, poor kid. Both so outstandingly ginger too.” He chuckled, clearly delighted that they had taken his often maligned given name for one of their boys.

“Oh that’s so great. Once I have everything cleared up I’ll get over there and make a fuss of them all. I can’t wait.” Betty smiled happily, imagining the new Momma Lodge-Andrews with two beautiful kids. “But how come you’re up here all alone? Are you finishing a book?”

“No, I don’t write anymore. Haven’t written more than a grocery list in years.” He stared down at his plate and she noticed with some shock that he had barely touched his food. This was not the Jughead that she knew; he was changed in so many ways.

“What are you doing then? For work?” Betty was feeling anxious that he wasn’t telling her something but he had adopted the stubborn expression that she knew so well. He was not going to make this easy for her. Why should he?

“Oh, you know, this and that. I get by.”  
“Jughead, what aren’t you telling me? Why are you up here all alone? What’s going on?” She was a pretty skilled interrogator under normal circumstances and yet all her skills had departed now. Her inquisition just made him dig in even more determinedly.

“Look Betty, with all due respect, it’s really none of your business. Can I clear your plate?” His voice was so cold that she felt like a bucket of water had been poured over her. She absorbed the blow and pulled her shoulders back. It was a trick she had seen her mother do so many times as a child. If someone had brought up her Southside roots, questioned her qualifications to run the Register or later, mentioned her murderous husband, she had squared her shoulders and put on another layer of psychological armour. Now Betty did the same. 

“Well, thanks for the meal. I’ll be on my way.” She offered a bright smile just as she would to any friend that she had been visiting but she saw by the crease between his brows that it wounded Jug just as much as his tone had hurt her. They really couldn’t be in the same room without inflicting pain on each other anymore.

“That’s ridiculous Betty. I’ll pack up and get out. You clearly need this place more than me. If you aren’t safe then this place is ideal, pretty much a fortress. I’ll be out of your way before lunch. I’ll just have to pack and call a cab to take me to the bus station.”

“Don’t you have your bike? How have you been getting around up here?”

“Nope, no bike. I manage fine.” Stubborn again, that sharp jawbone jutting out.

“Jug, I don’t want to chase you out. Look it’s a huge place, I only need a few days so just stay. I’ll keep out of your hair. Really, don’t clear out on my account. Stay.”

He laughed without any trace of humour at that. “Ain’t that a thing Betts? I suppose that’s the difference between us. If you say “Stay” to me I just physically can’t leave. Remember when I begged you, begged you on my knees to stay? You walked right out the door. It’s funny really. It wasn’t always that way.” His expression showed that it was anything but funny but he continued, “Just do as you please. I’m going to go out...for a run. You can have the master suite, I’m in the room in the back. I’ll keep to myself and try not to disturb you.” And with that he was gone, leaving Betty to ponder the fact that out of all of the rooms he could have chosen he had taken the one they had stayed in together all those years ago.

Betty unpacked and used the landline to call Veronica and offer her congratulations on the birth of the twins and her apologies for being a terrible friend. V was surprised to hear that she was at the lodge and immediately aghast when she remembered that Jughead was there too. “How is he? Is he… OK?’ she asked in such an oddly tentative way that Betty couldn’t work out what she meant.  
“Yeah, I mean he’s not delighted to see me, but he seems fine.” An idea occurred to her, “Has he been ill or something? He seems to be on some kind of health kick.”

“Umm, look B I don’t want to get in the middle of this so I’m going to plead the fifth and let you two deal with it or not deal with it or whatever it is you do.” Veronica sounded so uncomfortable that Betty stopped pushing but felt increasingly sure that she was onto something. She was an investigator after all. Veronica knew better than to ask why Betty was in need of sanctuary so they kept their conversation to the joys and grossness of new motherhood, promising to go out and drink mimosas together as soon as practicable.

She heard Jughead return a couple of hours later, so whatever had been ailing him couldn’t be too serious. A two hour run would challenge her and she had always prided herself on her endurance. She felt surprised at his athleticism and yet, she blushed as she recalled, his stamina had always been pretty impressive.

She kept out of the way for the rest of the day and read or watched TV, lying on the huge master bed. It had been weeks since she had felt so relaxed. The luxury of napping during the daytime was gloriously decadent. She idly wondered what Jughead had found to occupy himself and then remembered, with a jolt, that he had said he wasn’t writing anymore. She found it hard to conceive of a Jughead who wasn’t a writer and she found herself grieving for the books that he wouldn’t write. She had always thought he would be famous, celebrated. She had imagined that, if she got out of his way, he would throw himself into his work. She thought there would be an oeuvre that would make Stephen King look like a dilettante. She had found herself searching for his name on the spines at Barnes and Noble, scanning the book review sections of newspapers. Now, it transpired, there were no books and there never would be. This seemed like even more evidence that he had been ill, perhaps even seriously. She shuddered to imagine that he had needed her and she hadn’t been there for him, had abandoned him. He hadn’t lied earlier. He had begged her, on his knees, not to leave him. It had nearly killed her to walk past him and close the door behind her, her heart shrivelling in her chest. If she hadn’t had her work it would have killed her. And he hadn’t had that, it seemed. Now more ideas occurred to her that seemed to substantiate her theory. She allowed her mind to roam back to four years earlier.

When she had been recruited by the human trafficking department she had been ecstatic. She wanted to really make a difference and, although she knew her work in corporate crime mattered, every case was so complex that they never seemed to be resolved. She never met victims. Just pored over endless spreadsheets. It just wasn’t what she had joined the FBI for. So, when Charles had called and told her that there was a chance that she could come across and work for him in trafficking, she had been delighted. She understood that it would mean that she would need to work undercover. He told her there would be extra training and assessments and it wasn’t for everyone so she shouldn’t get her hopes up. As a matter of fact, it turned out that Betty was a natural. She had grown up putting on a facade, concealing her feelings, dissembling. This was just more of the same, except that now, instead of playing a good girl, she was a gang member. That was easy too. She had learned how the Serpents functioned, that it was vital to make a show of strength when challenged and to never back down. These gangs were much more sinister than the Serpents but the principles were the same. She sailed through the aptitude tests and was assigned to infiltrate a gang trading girls out of Somalia for sex work. She saved those girls, some of them at least. Most of them were twelve or thirteen years old and yet, by the time she had gathered the evidence to convict the king pin, they looked thirty. She had been in the field for just over three months that first time and when she opened the door of her apartment she had been buzzing with excitement, longing for the passionate reunion she anticipated. She had been shocked to see him. He always had shadows under his beautiful eyes but now they were bruises. He had always been lean but now he was so thin. Instead of taut chest muscles she could feel every rib under his shirt as he held her to him. He was happy she was home but he realised that it was just for a few weeks before she would be going back out there and his jaw tightened as he tried to conceal the fact that he was bracing himself for the pain to begin again.

There was a year of that. Every time she came through the door he looked worse. Had he been sick then? She’d assumed it was mental anguish. Once, in college, when he was going through an Edgar Allen Poe phase, he had been researching medieval torture. He had told her about how they would kill criminals by breaking them on a wheel. The torturer would drop a metal cartwheel on the shins, the thighs, the arms, the wrists, snapping the bones. Then he would thread the mangled limbs through the spokes of the wheel and the victim would be left there to die in agony. It could take nine or ten days. Every time she saw him she felt like that torturer. She was breaking him on the wheel of her need to do this work. She was putting the person she loved through the most unendurable suffering. He never, never asked her to stop.

At the end of that year she couldn’t endure it any longer. She couldn’t put him through it again, returning to him only to leave again. She couldn’t stop the work because she had seen those girls, covered in scars, with hopelessness in their eyes. Those girls were in her mind every day and every night, pleading with her to save them. If she ignored them she would hate herself for it. Eventually it would kill what she felt for him because she would have chosen her own desires over what she knew to be her duty. She couldn’t stay but she couldn’t bear to keep returning only to leave again. She had to give Jughead the only mercy she could. She had to end it and let him get over her. She could do the work she needed to do, he could make a life without her, a happy life. She knew that she would never want anyone else but that was OK. She had the work; it was enough. He was so wonderful that he would always be loved. He would hurt for a while, perhaps even a long while, but it would be survivable. What he was going through when she was undercover wasn’t.

So she left him. To do it, to make it stick, she did something unforgivable, the only thing she’d ever done that she really considered a sin, and then she walked out. Her heart had broken irreparably but, if anything, she was better at the job. She had nothing to lose and was prepared to put herself on the line again and again. She didn’t have to worry that Jughead would lose her; he already had.

She ventured downstairs, as the light faded to violet over the lake, in search of food. He was reading a sheaf of papers on the couch and, as she entered, he began to gather them up as if to leave the room. Her heart ached that he couldn’t bear to be in the room with her, that she had made herself that offensive to him, but she managed what she hoped was a friendly smile. “It’s OK Jug. I just came to find something to eat. Have you eaten already?”  
“I’m not really hungry.” She had never heard him say such a thing before so she stared at him in alarm. She remembered that he hadn’t eaten breakfast. Had he eaten at all? He must have run miles today. He needed to eat and she was painfully aware that she needed to feed him.  
“Well I’m going to fix something. Can I persuade you to join me?”  
His expression was unreadable as he looked at her but then he shrugged and muttered “Sure.” before returning to his papers.  
She found rice and dried porcini in the pantry. There were fresh herbs on the windowsill in pots and a chunk of parmesan in the refrigerator. Mushroom risotto then. Not really Jughead’s style in the past but who knew now?  
“Hey Jug,” she called into the other room. “Could you check out the Lodge wine cellar? I want some white for the risotto.”  
There was no reply but she heard him get off the couch. He came to stand by the kitchen island and waited until she looked at him. “The cellar is empty Betty. Archie took all the wine back to New York. To help me.”  
She stared at him uncomprehendingly as he fished into his jean pocket and brought out a bronze coin and handed it to her. She stared at it blankly, unable to understand what it was. “I’m one year sober Betty. That’s my sobriety token. And this has been the most difficult day of that whole year so please don’t offer me alcohol because I am hanging on by a thread here.”

She cooked the risotto with chicken stock that she found in the freezer.


	2. Thought I'd finally beat the feeling back. It all came back today

From the moment that he had told her, she had wanted to hold him so much that her whole body ached. She didn’t trust that she could stop herself so, every time she put down her fork, she gripped the edge of the table with white knuckles while he spoke. “Look, I’m not blaming you Betty. This is totally on me. I made my own choices and I have to live with the consequences. It’s not your fault, it’s not my dad’s fault. It just is what it is. I had always, in some part of my mind, expected you to wake up and realise who I was… who I am… and to leave. I pushed it down, suppressed it I suppose, but it was always there. I knew. You were always so much more than I could ever deserve. I told you once that we were on borrowed time and I guess I always believed that. So when you said what you said…”

He glanced at her, alarmed by the sound that she had made. It was a yelp, like an animal in pain. She couldn’t think about that thing. The thing she had said that she knew would damn her in spite of any good she ever did in the world. The blasphemous lie that she had told the one person who always deserved the truth.

Her green eyes met his steady blue gaze and something passed between them that neither of them could have put into words. It was an acknowledgement of what they had been to each other, for good and for bad. She would not be her if she had not met him, loved him and left him. The price of her forging Special Agent Betty Cooper had been his peace of mind, his dreams and all his many, many gifts. She could never make that right.

Before either of them could speak again the security console buzzed and three amber lights began to flash. Betty reached out to the chair beside her where she had placed her weapon, out of sight, when she sat down to eat.  
“Juggie, safe room. Now.” She moved swiftly to the screen to read the alerts being triggered.  
“What’s going on? It’s probably just a moose or something outside isn’t it?”  
“Well, given that it’s trying to force the basement window lock, I doubt it. Please Jughead, safe room immediately.”

Jughead’s eyes widened in alarm as Betty grabbed her last burner phone from the kitchen counter and gestured to him to move quickly. Moments later they were secured in Hiram Lodge’s well equipped, if cramped, panic room. Betty switched on the video monitoring system and cycled through the different views the cameras provided. They could see shadowy figures moving through the grounds towards the house, their approach followed by the sound of breaking glass. Betty had pressed the silent alarm as soon as they had closed the door of the safe room and it was only a matter of time before the security company sent guards and local law enforcement. There was water and other basic supplies so Betty felt sure they were in no immediate danger, no matter how alarming their situation, but she felt guilty that Jughead was being dragged into her drama. She would need to get him safely away at the earliest opportunity. For that she needed to get Charles up to speed.

She grabbed the cellphone and tapped in his private number. There were some advantages to being the half-sister of the boss. The number rang and rang. Finally a woman’s voice answered, “This is Charles Smith’s phone.” She sounded tearful and exhausted but Betty knew the voice immediately.  
“Mom?”  
“Betty? Oh Betty where are you? I’ve been so worried.”  
“Mom, why are you answering Charles’ phone? What’s happening? What’s wrong?”  
“Betty darling. Charles has been shot. I’m with him in the hospital. He’s in a coma. We don’t know…we don’t know if he will wake up.”

Twenty minutes later Jughead was reviewing their situation. “Right so we are trapped in a sardine can while the Chechen mafia destroy Veronica’s house, our brother has been shot and is in critical condition. The fact that he was shot in his office building means it was an inside job which implies that someone who wants you dead now has access to all of your personal information and can anticipate anywhere you might try to run and you are still insisting that I can’t smoke a cigarette.”  
“Well, I’m suspecting Chechens but I’m not popular with the Somali gangs or the Chicago mob, the Genovese family really hate me and there is still some bad blood with the Colombian cartels. So it could be any of them, maybe even all of them. And I’m not breathing your secondary smoke in here until the police come.”

“So provoking gangsters is allowable, according to your wellness plan, but smoking poses an unacceptable level of risk. I’m just trying to get this straight.”

She couldn’t prevent herself from smiling at the snark in his tone and at the familiar way that he pulled on his hair in frustration. Being so close without being able to touch him was an exquisite agony; it hurt but she didn’t want it to stop. This was the most erotically charged siege situation she could recall. At last the sound of sirens drifted to them from the main road and the crashing and yelling in the house fell silent. Running footsteps passed by the concealed entrance to the safe room as the would-be assassins bundled out, no doubt to go back to their bosses and confess the failure of their hunting expedition.

Betty didn’t want to explain the full story to the police officers and have station gossip get back to unfriendly ears. As Jughead explained to the officers that he was a guest of Ms Lodge-Andrews and that there had been a home invasion which had led to him and his friend taking refuge in the safe room, she smudged her eye make up and undid an extra button of her blouse. She was sure she could convincingly play the part of the casual hook-up, in the hope that they would not need to include her in their reports. She had a spare legend for situations when she wanted to avoid local law enforcement but she was well aware that using it would trigger alerts back at Quantico that she should avoid if someone was gunning for Cooper-Smiths. She fluttered her eyelashes at the beat cop as she spoke to him. “Officer, I’d be so grateful if you could just forget I was here. My husband is away on a business trip and I was really lonely. I don’t want him to be mad with Mr Jones here. Can you just overlook it? Please?”

Jughead stared at her in astonishment. It was years since he had seen Betty Cooper in stealth mode and he’d nearly forgotten how amazing she was. Was that even a hint of a southern accent? Was she doing Blanche Dubois right now? It was hot. He could imagine playing out the rest of that scene. The loner caretaker picks up the bored housewife in a bar and they share a night of forbidden passion until criminals invade the isolated property and horror ensues. It had the makings of a fun short story. His fingers itched for a pen to note down the bones of it before he realised that he hadn’t felt the urge to write anything since that night, the night Betty said what she said and left him. It seemed she actually was his muse.

Once the police had noted the details they needed, omitting the presence of the floozy, they prepared to leave. One patrol car was going to remain on site in case there was a repeat performance but Betty and Jughead were finally at liberty to survey the damage. There were a couple of broken windows and some Lodge valuables had been carelessly broken but, given that they had been invaded by gangsters, things weren’t too bad. Betty was able to lock the front door and Jughead found some two-by-fours to secure the windows until they could call the glazier in the morning. They were both too wired to sleep and so at 3 a.m they found themselves back in the kitchen, nursing cups of cocoa. It was inevitable that they would return to the topic of the conversation that had been interrupted over dinner. She understood that ignorance was bliss but she had to face what had happened in the aftermath of her departure from his life.

“Well, after… that night, I just accepted that it was pointless pretending I could be...anything anymore. I was FP’s boy, failed gang leader, failed boyfriend, failed writer. I crawled into a bottle and stayed there for eighteen months. It was absolutely a choice. It didn't creep up on me. I know what alcohol does to Jones men and so I chose it as the most self-destructive, self-hating option I could imagine. Archie and Veronica tried to help, Jellybean tried, my dad, your mom, even my mom gave it a shot, but I just wanted to be...nothing and so I drank. I lost the apartment. Arch brought my dad by one day and they carted me back to Riverdale. My dad got me somewhere to live, paid six months rent and they took my bike so I couldn’t kill myself with it. I just carried right on drinking. I can’t even imagine how my dad must have felt. His son, with his degree from Columbia, making enough money to pay for cheap whisky by doing the jobs the Serpents threw me out of sympathy. Sweet Pea’s the Serpent King now. My dad had to pick me up a few times as Sheriff but he managed to keep me out of jail. Then, one day, Pop Tate saw me outside his place and dragged me inside. He made me drink coffee until I was almost sober and he said that he was disappointed in me and that you would be too if you could see me. No-one else had mentioned your name in front of me. People had been giving me lectures like that for months but, for whatever reason, that day it took. I asked my dad to take me to rehab. I was there for ninety days. It was really hard. I was a snivelling, puking wreck for most of it but everyone was so happy and hopeful. Jelly just sobbed down the phone when I was allowed to talk to her. I couldn’t let her down. So I got sober and when I got out Veronica and Archie took me in. Then, when the babies were born, I wanted to give them some space so they suggested I came here, away from temptation, to make sure it stuck permanently. And then you came. Betts it’s really hard. I get through a day and I haven’t taken a drink but then there’s another day and I have to do it again, over and over and over.”

She moved around the table and went to put her arms around him but he stood and took a step back. Out of reach. “Betty please don’t. It’s more than I can stand. I know you aren’t trying to be cruel but it’s taken me three years to come to terms with the fact that I can’t have you and still be able to function, if functioning is what this is. I know I’m pitiful but please let me be.”

“But Jug…” she began. She could confess now, and take him in her arms and have him make love to her and maybe everything could be as it was, but she paused. There would be no way that he could forgive her. What she had done was so wicked that no penance could ever absolve her. He had survived and gotten well without her. Sometimes back in the Middle Ages, when the victim was broken on the wheel, by some miracle they didn’t die. Eventually their friends were allowed to come and tenderly take them off the instrument of their torture, take them home and care for them. They would always be broken, of course, but they were alive. Was she really prepared to wait until now, when he was as healed as he ever would be, and then take him back to the wheel and break him all over again? No-one could be so vile even if they hated their victim. She loved him, loved him beyond reason, which was why she had to be strong and let him be, just as he asked.

Eventually he dozed off on the couch. She watched while he slept just in case they needed to make a return visit to the safe room but eventually daylight came and the police officer returned to town. Betty prepared breakfast and left Jug to eat undisturbed as she took her plate out onto the porch. She called the glass company and the Lodge name ensured that a workman was on site within the hour. It was almost as if nothing had happened. She considered her next step. She could make her way to Quantico and allow the agency to keep her safe, give her a new identity, send her back into the field. The problem was that someone at Quantico had shot her brother and almost certainly wanted to do the same or worse to her. And she had no idea who or why. She could set off again, find another safe location but, she had to assume all of her information was in the hands of those seeking to harm her, so she would have to go to places she didn’t know and face unknown hazards. She could go to her apartment in Washington, “home”, she supposed she should call it, where her mother and FP were staying to be near Charles’ bedside, but that would place them at even greater risk. All in all, even though the bad guys probably knew where she was, she was safer staying put. Then she thought about getting Jughead to safety but she couldn’t imagine where that would be. If they knew that his connection to her they might see him as a useful bargaining chip. At least if he was with her she could do everything possible to protect him. She decided to fortify and dig in, at least until the other shoe dropped and Charles either recovered or didn’t.

Betty retreated to the master suite with one of the many iPads with which the lodge was supplied and idly began to do a little research on addiction. Obviously, she knew what alcoholism was and even understood the basis of therapy but she wanted to understand what it felt like to be an addict. She came across a video clip where a woman talked about her addiction, saying that she thought that anything could be an addiction if a person couldn't give it up even though it made their life worse. She was in recovery from drug problem and she recalled that before her addiction she had a husband, children, a job, a home, friends, even hobbies but that gradually she lost all of those things until there was just the next fix. She was so sorry for Juggie who hadn’t been able to stop drinking even though it was destroying his life. Then she thought about her own life. Once she had a relationship with a man she loved and respected, friends whose baby showers she would have organised, an apartment that she called home without scare quotes around the word. She used to like running and yoga classes and shopping with V and going to the salon for a blowout. What did she have now? With blinding clarity, she realised that she was an addict too. She was powerless to disengage from her work even in the face of the fact that it had laid waste to her life. Even now, in this beautiful location, with the only man she had ever loved, with her brother in the hospital, his life in the balance, all she had really been concerned with was when she could get back to work. She tried to argue against this insight. Her work was important, it saved lives, she was doing it well, it mattered. All the while a voice in the back of her mind was challenging her, saying “But that’s not why you’re doing it Betty. You're doing it because you want the power, the excitement, the anonymity, the secret. It’s not that you don’t want to stop; you can’t stop and you don't care who pays the price.”

In the face of all this perspicuity Betty was exhausted. She laid back onto the bed and closed her eyes. Two nights of anxiety and adrenaline had taken their toll and she fell asleep quickly and deeply. In her dream she was back in the apartment in Greenpoint that she had shared with Jug when she first started at the Bureau and when her life had been full. It seemed to be Spring, early morning. There was a pink glow in the sky and she could hear traffic in the street below as the city transitioned from the sounds of partiers and drinkers trailing home to the purposeful sounds of the working world starting up. She felt his hand stroke up her leg from her ankle to her hip and she lazily rolled onto her back, opening her legs for him to move above her. His hand was on her breast, his lips at her neck and she hummed her approval. He was poised, hard, and she shifted herself down so that he slipped inside her. She felt the smile on her face as he thrust lazily, slowly and as the heat in her belly intensified. Soft moans fell from her lips as he worked them towards their climax… ”Betts” he murmured in her ear, his breath soft against her skin, “Oh Betts.”

“Betts! Betty!” Her eyes flew open. Jughead was calling her name from outside the door and she was waking up with her hand inside her pyjamas in a state of humiliating arousal. She pulled herself together as much as possible before croakily replying, “What is it Jughead? I was just taking a nap.”

“Veronica just called. She doesn’t know where Archie is. She’s panicking.”

Betty was so angry with herself. She had been distracted by Jughead, by Charles, by the events of the night before, by dirty dreams that she hadn’t paused to consider that, just maybe, when they couldn’t get her they would go after those closest to her. Obviously she should have warned Veronica. But she hadn’t because apparently she was careless with the people who loved her. It was another wake-up call. She took a mental inventory and realised that she was selfish, no, self-obsessed. But there wasn’t time for self reproach. She had to figure it out and neutralise the threat, if possible. If not she would just give them what they wanted. At any rate the only non-negotiable thing was that she had to get Archie back to his babies and to his wife whose only crime was not cutting loose her dangerous, destructive friend.

Veronica was unrecognisable on the phone. Cool, witty V was falling apart by degrees. Apparently they’d been packing for a weekend trip to see Hermione in the Hamptons. Archie headed out to bring the car round to the front of the building to pick up Ronnie and the babies and simply never arrived. The security guard was found bludgeoned in the parking garage and Archie was gone. There had been no word, no demands, no threats. Archie was a bruiser but Betty fervently hoped that he wasn’t fighting now. They wouldn’t hesitate to kill him if he became a problem. He was completely expendable to them, whoever they were. Eventually she was able to interjects to promise her friend that she would make it right. She asked about the security situation and was satisfied that, as long as Veronica kept her word and stayed indoors, she was safe. Hermione was travelling down to be with her so at least they were together.

As she put down the phone Betty sprang into action. She grabbed her bag, pulled her hair into a tight high ponytail and holstered her sidearm. She needed to change the car, get herself a couple of new burner phones and get back to Philadelphia as fast as she could. “Jughead, can you ring the parents? Tell them what’s happening and tell FP to get back-up. Serpents and deputies. More than he thinks he needs. If things go… bad… with Archie they will be looking for more bargaining chips. And Jellybean. They need to get her somewhere safe. Oh, and Polly and the kids too. If anyone knows where they are.”  
“Where’re you going? What’s the plan?”

“I’m going to head back down to Philly. If I can get into the belly of the beast there’s a chance I’ll be able to surprise them. If not, maybe I can do a trade, get Archie out of there at any rate.”

“That’s not a plan Betts. That’s just suicide. We can do better than that.”

That word. “We.” It hit her again. Just like that night in his trailer at the start of all this, the start of “we” and “us” and “always” and “the long haul” and “forever.” They had been kids and they’d felt invincible; they’d had no idea what they’d have to face but they knew they could overcome anything that was thrown at them. And they had. Bereavement, criminality, poverty, blackmail, distance…everything. But then the problem they couldn’t counteract was her and her obsession with this work. They couldn’t diffuse that bomb. She couldn’t eliminate herself and still be his. “We” made tears spring up in her eyes and she looked down at her bag to hide them from him while she got herself back under control. “What do you suggest then Jug? You’ve always been a strategist. Got a plan?”

And he kind of did.

Sweetpea sounded worried when he answered Jughead’s call. There had been a couple of years where a call from the former Serpent Prince had never been good news. He was broke or he was sick or he was getting beaten up in a bar brawl so Sweetpea or one of the other serpents were going to have to turn out of a warm bed and the arms of their girl to go and get him. Jughead was grateful to Sweetpea and to Toni who had done far more than their share of nursemaiding. They had taken to calling him Hotdog because he was as helpless and he generally smelt as bad but he knew that their joking was an facade and that they hurt for him. He hadn’t deserved their loyalty. Now he was asking favours again and he understood Sweetpea’s caution. “Are you…OK?” Jughead knew what he was being asked.  
“One year, three weeks and four days of stone cold OK, Sweets. I’m doing fine. But I need some help.”

“Jones, things are crazy here.”

“Sweetpea, it’s for Betty.” That was all he needed to hear. If Jones needed something for Betty then Jones was going to get it and there was really no point in trying to dissuade him. The quickest thing was just to agree right away.

“There's a Chechen gang in Philly doing business in girls. Sending them to massage parlours up and down the East Coast. I need a meet with the boss." Jughead glanced down at the page of notes that he had written while Betty outlined the gang she had infiltrated. "He’s a dude called Timur. Can you set it up? Tell him I’ve got something to trade? Let him know I’m a Serpent.”

“Those are bad guys Jones. You don’t want to be dealing with them. They’re way worse than ghoulies.”

“Look I know Sweets and if there was a way to avoid it I would but there isn’t so can you do it?”

“Yeah, I guess. There are Serpents down there I can hit up. I’ll be in touch.”

“Great, you make contact and we’ll set up where and when later. I’ve got a feeling maybe he’s in Manhattan.”

“Fine, be in touch.”

“Another thing Sweets.” The sigh down the line was audible and Jughead hated imposing on his old friend but this was for Archie; there really wasn’t any choice. “I need my bike. Can you get someone to bring it up? I think it's still in Mary Andrew's garage at Elm Street.”

“Fine. I’ll get a couple of the kids to ride up. Tonight?”

“Yeah. Tell them to bring it to the other side of the lake. By the moorings. Text me when it’s there?”

  
Having pushed his luck with the Serpent King as far as it would go, Jughead took his leave and went to find Betty. Now they would have to wait.


	3. Look At That- Would You Look At That?-We're Throwing Off Sparks

She was sitting at the kitchen island again, a cup of mint tea steaming on the counter in front of her and an out of date fashion magazine unopened next to it. Being in close proximity to him kept transporting her back to the day that she had thrown a grenade into their lives and walked away from the explosion. She'd decided that, if he didn’t seem better when she got home from her assignment, she would do what must be done and stop dragging out this torture. She had spent a year working alongside business experts when she was investigating corporate crime and she had learned that, when an organisation had to lay people off, it was much kinder to follow the mantra "Cut once, cut deep." Dragging out the agony just made people more anxious and they couldn't heal. If he looked as bad as last time she would obey that mantra and make sure that the blow fell hard enough to sever their connection so he could move on. He had looked worse, so much worse, so she set her jaw, asked him to sit and took his hand as she calmly told him that she had met someone, a colleague. She explained that she had fallen in love with him and only now did she realise that what she felt for Jug was only a kind of friendship. She was pleased that he didn't ask for a name because she hadn't made one up. She was sorry, she told him, but she hadn’t ever loved him in the way he wanted and now she had to follow her heart. Even the memory of speaking those words made her want to tear off her skin, to scream, to die. The grief was too much to bear but now she was saved from her memories by hearing his footsteps on the stairs. He was coming to tell her that he had made the call to risk his life for her. She couldn't fathom that even after what she had done he would willingly die for her. 

“OK?” Her eyebrows raised as she watched him enter the room.

“Fine. We need to get across the lake once it’s dark. I’ve rowed it a few times. It’ll take about half an hour. We’ll need to travel light and fast.”

Betty looked at him from under lowered lashes. Hesitantly she murmured, “Can we talk Jug? There are things that I want to say but I don’t know if I can. I don’t know how to be with you. Are we friends now or…?”

“Have you been sitting here brooding?” He remembered the way that she would always ponder things for hours and then, when she had overthought herself into a tangle, they would sit and talk it out. He dragged one of the bar stools over and sat down opposite her. “We can talk.”

“OK.” She sucked in a deep breath and did that thing with her shoulders that he had been noticing more and more. It looked like there was a steel rod up her back and she was wrapping her shoulder blades around it. Uncomfortable. “I want to tell you that I’m so sorry.”

He opened his mouth to interrupt but she ploughed on over him. “I know you said the drinking was all on you, that you chose it but I need to take responsibility for myself too. Is there one of the steps in AA where you have to kind of audit yourself? Have I understood that right?”

“We make a “searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves”” Jughead smiled making air quotes. “It ain’t pretty.”

“Well I’ve been trying to do that today, sort of. I’ve been so caught up in myself, thinking that what I do is the most important thing in the world, that I’ve sacrificed everything and everyone to it. If my work was a drug everyone would know that I’m an addict but, because it looks like I’m doing a good thing, I get to be an ass without anyone calling me on it. All you ever did was love me and I hurt you, nearly killed you. I justified it to myself, said you would be better off…”. His breath exploded out of him. His eyes were wide with astonishment at the idea that he could be better off without her and she paused to really look at him. He looked older, so much sadder. There were a couple of small wrinkles around his eyes. She had done that. “You were in so much pain Jug. Every time I came home you looked like you hadn't slept for weeks. I told myself you’d get over me if I just ended it and you wouldn’t have to be suffering. But then it turns out I was just giving you even more pain.”

“Betts, me loving you doesn’t mean you owe me anything. My feelings are mine to deal with. I never wanted you to stay with me because you felt sorry for me or guilty about me. It was right that you told me the truth when you realised that you didn’t love me. It was the right thing to do. If someone else can give you what you want then I want that for you. I was weak and self-pitying then and couldn’t handle it but that isn’t your fault. I’d made my whole life about us and when there was no us anymore, I just didn’t know how to be.” He had been staring at his fingers as he spoke but now he felt, more than saw, her shoulders heaving. She was sobbing silently.

“Oh Jug,” she could barely get the words out as her chest heaved and she gasped to drag in air. “It was a lie. It was a terrible, evil lie. I knew you wouldn’t let me go if you knew how much I loved you, how much it was costing me. But I always, always loved you. Only ever you. I loved you when I was sixteen. I love you now. I never stopped. I never could.”

He just stared at her. He couldn’t believe that the smartest person he knew could be so dumb, so completely careless with their lives. "There wasn't someone...?"

"No, of course not. There's only ever been you. I lied so you wouldn't come after me. To make it stick."

Now, for the first time, he was really angry with her. “You’re going to have to give me some time with that Betty. I don’t know what to say to you.” He stared at her for a moment as she sobbed and stalked towards the glass doors that led out towards the lake.

“You can’t go out there Jug. Not safe.” she warned and he swivelled on a heel and headed up the stairs instead.

He didn’t reappear until twilight was falling over the water. “Sweet called. The bike’s there and the meet’s set up for tomorrow. We need to get going.”

“You don’t have to do this Jug. I can…”

“We’re doing it for Archie, for Veronica, for my godsons. Come on.” His voice was cool and made her heart sink. She didn’t know what she had expected or wanted from him but she knew that she didn’t deserve his forgiveness.

There was just enough light left in the sky to make their way to the boathouse without needing to use a flashlight. They moved silently until they had pushed off with the oars and then Jug began to row confidently away from the lodge. She whispered that she could take a turn but he extended an arm and whispered “Long levers” at her. It was how he used to explain his strength to her. He was always lean and yet he could lift her almost over his head. He would hoist her up and recite the law of the lever like a smartass.

“A force applied to a point farther from the pivot must be less than the force located at a point closer in, because power is the product of force and velocity,” she hissed at him to show that she remembered. He grinned back in the half dark before he remembered how mad he was at her and focussed on the oars again.

They were almost half way across the lake before he spoke again. “It was terrible…when you kept going away that year. But it wasn’t because I was scared of you dying or something. Well, not exactly. We’re going to die, that’s the one certainty. It was because you would die alone, or be in pain alone, or be scared alone. That was what I couldn’t handle. If something happened to you and my being there could take away one iota of your pain I wanted, no, I needed, to be there. But I couldn’t and it was tearing me apart. And then when you went, it was so much worse. That meant you would definitely be in pain and be scared and die someday and I definitely wouldn’t be there. It just made me feel so lonely Betts.”

Betty understood that because she understood him. Jughead at fifteen clutching that old copy of Metamorphosis about the boy who was a different species to everyone, even his family, a monster that they hated and feared. Jughead at sixteen, letting a gang beat him nearly to death because he was trying so hard to belong, Jughead at eighteen, lying on his back by the swimming hole with a copy of L’Etranger in his hand, holding it up against the sun, squinting at the words, struggling with the French because if Meursault felt alone, like him, that meant that at least there were others who felt alone like him. Alone, alone, alone. Then she had promised him that he wasn’t alone after all. He had begun to believe her, begun to think maybe they could always face the world together. But when he completely trusted her she began to leave him over and over again, so he felt more alone than before. And when she left him for good she told him that he had been wrong all the time; she didn’t love him, he’d really been alone all along. Sitting in that boat she felt like she was seeing him in slices like a CAT scan, like she could see all the way into him. And, terrifyingly, she loved him even more.

They seemed to get across the lake without being spotted. The bike was waiting in the parking lot by the moorings. Jughead used his knife quickly to unscrew the tail light housing and take out the ignition key from its hiding place. She climbed onto the bike behind him with practised ease; it had been a minute but it felt so familiar. With a jolt she realised as she put her arms around his waist that this was the first time she had touched him since that day. Memories of her dream earlier that morning flooded through her and, to her horror and shame, she felt a familiar tugging sensation in her belly. He could have thrown her to the floor and taken her right there and she would beg him not to stop. There had been no one else since she ended it between them; there had never been anyone else. For her sex meant Jughead and only Jughead. When it was over between them, that part of her life was over. Sometimes she took care of herself but she could only come when she imagined that her hand was his, pictured him below her, flushed and glistening with sweat, tried to hear his voice in her mind, low and with just an edge of danger. If she gave in and let herself picture him, she would come down from the orgasm to guilt and sadness and shame and grief, so eventually she more or less stopped. She was a woman in her mid twenties who had resigned herself to never having sex again. And now she was a woman in her mid twenties who was being painfully turned on like a teenager by riding a motorcycle behind the only man she could ever imagine wanting to make love with. It was almost beyond her power to keep holding on to him she wanted him so much. She even found herself pressing against him to get a little more contact like some terrible subway pervert rubbing himself against a girl on the Crosstown line. She deserved it, to want him like this, it was the least of the penance that her actions warranted.

As Jughead had expected Timur had agreed to a meeting in New York. It made it more likely that Betty’s suspicion had been right; it was the Chechens who had travelled to Manhattan to kidnap Archie. It also implied that they had not moved him far from his Upper West Side address. With one stop for gas they made it in under three hours. The location for the meeting was the Williamsburg Bridge. They both knew Brooklyn well enough to find a cheap hotel for the night without difficulty. Betty felt pretty sure there was no-one on their tail but they grabbed Chinese food to eat in the room rather than risking being spotted over Dim Sum in a restaurant and spoiling their plan. Betty checked in while he got the bike squared away but as they made their way up in the elevator she realised that it hadn’t occurred to her to get two rooms. Her brain seemed to have decided that, as she was with Jughead, of course there would only be one room. She blushed as she wondered if maybe it wasn’t her brain that had decided that after all. “Juggie, I’m sorry. I should have asked if you want your own room. I can go back to the desk if you want. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

His voice was low when he replied. “Betty Cooper I have been climbing out of my skin wanting you for three hours. I plan to eat enough of this food to keep me alive and then I really hope that you are going to let me show you what you have been missing. You aren’t seriously going to refuse this are you?” He gestured down his body with a self deprecating snort and she threw herself at him just as the elevator dinged to indicate their floor and the doors opened.

Somehow without disentangling themselves they managed to find their room. He unlocked the door while she was pressed against it, his thigh between her legs, his mouth at her neck. The door opened and they fell backwards into the room. They would have ended up on the carpet if he hadn’t grabbed onto the doorframe to save them. He threw the bags onto the bed and snatched the takeout bag from her hand to drop it on the bureau. “Juggie, the food,” she gasped between open mouthed kisses.

“Fuck the food,” he growled as he pulled her sweatshirt over her head and his mouth dived back to her neck, sucking furiously at her skin, marking her. Suddenly he pulled back and she mewled in disappointment. “Betty, is this OK? Do you want this? You don’t feel…obligated or anything do you?”

“Jughead Jones. Please, please fuck me. I want you so much.” She couldn’t even feel embarrassed at how needy she was, simply gasping and throwing her head back when he put his hand on her breast.

“I’m taking that to be pretty comprehensive consent,” he smirked at her. She dropped to her knees in front of him and the smirk disappeared in an instant.

Afterwards as she lay with her head on his chest, his hand wrapped around her to gently comb through her hair, she kept replaying it over and over again. When she had taken him in her mouth she found, to her surprise, that she was as excited as he seemed to be. In the past she had gone down on him for him; when they were teenagers it had been his favourite thing in the world and she had obliged him but she’d never got much out of it herself. Tonight she had glanced up at him and he had bitten down on his bottom lip, reaching out a hand to steady himself on the dresser and she had almost come. The feeling of holding him in her hand and her mouth, having him so vulnerable to her had made her feel powerful and protective of him. All she wanted was to make him feel that he wasn’t alone, even if it was just for a moment. He hadn’t let her get him off though and somehow she had found herself sitting on the edge of the bed, him kneeling in front of her in supplication, pushing her knees apart and putting his mouth on her. It felt like coming home after a long day, from a cold rainy street to warmth and comfort and love and safety. But then he had started to suck, had moved his hand to work with his mouth, had slipped a finger, no two fingers, no three, oh God, three, inside her and then his thumb on her, rubbing in circles and his mouth on her breast and his hair against her skin and somehow everything was happening at once and it was almost too much and yet not enough and she came apart into tiny, kaleidoscopic shards that rotated and rearranged themselves and reassembled as her but different. She had taken him in her hand again then, silky and smooth and so completely him. His eyes had been half closed in pleasure and his breathing deep and slow as she had stroked him slowly over and over again. “So good” he had murmured and her heart had ached because she knew him so well, knew what he liked, knew the rhythms and pulses of his body like nobody else had ever known him. What a privilege it was to love him like this; how could she ever have let it go? She swung a leg across his body and eased herself down onto him until they were joined as deeply as it was possible to be. He opened his eyes and gestured towards his jeans, discarded by the door.

“Condom?”

“Still on birth control and there’s only ever been you.” she whispered.

He sighed and then replied so softly, “Me too. Only you.” She rolled her hips and he gasped, his eyes opening and burning into her. She rocked against him, pushing herself against his pelvis, one hand on his belly where the trail of dark hair led down to where she could see his body meeting hers. He knew when she was close and he reached up to squeeze her nipple between his thumb and forefinger and used his other hand to give her more friction where she rolled against him. As she came he flipped her over onto her back (long levers) and then thrust against her, hard and deep, chasing his own completion. There was a bead of sweat running from his hairline to his jaw and she rolled her shoulders up from the bed to lick it off him, salty on her tongue. It made him snort with laughter but when she grazed her teeth down his neck he gasped and shuddered as he came. “Kinky” he grinned at her as he fell back next to her slightly short of breath.

As she lay there with him a question struck her so she asked him. “Since when do you carry condoms?”

“Since my pillion passenger has taken to rubbing herself against me like a horny poodle. I took the hint and bought them when I got gas.” She began to giggle and then he joined in. It felt like they were sixteen again, in the first flush of young love.

When Betty opened her eyes there was light outside and the familiar Brooklyn sound of a siren in the distance. Jughead was snoring quietly behind her with his arm wrapped protectively around her waist. She realised that she didn't want to ask him what it all meant because she was scared that he would say that it didn't mean anything. She wanted to stay forever. And, just like that, she decided that she would. If they could get through this, if they could just get Archie back, if Jughead would have her, she would send in her letter of resignation and she would stay with him for always and they would get married and the wedding toasts would be made with ginger ale and there would be a dog and babies and swing sets and so much love. It was a nice daydream.

Eventually they dragged themselves out of bed and Jughead tugged on his clothes to fetch them coffee and bagels. Last night’s Chinese food still lay untouched seeping grease through the brown paper onto the furniture and she suspected that, if he had been alone, it would have served as breakfast but she vetoed that by dropping it into the trashcan before he could even propose it. On his return, swigging coffee as he tapped his phone, he seemed entirely her Jughead again but then he broke the illusion that all was as it used to be. “Betts I’m sorry but I need to go to a meeting. Looks like there is one in twenty minutes that I can get to. Will you be OK?”

“Of course I will Jug. I’m sorry I hadn’t thought. How often…?”

“Well I was going everyday. When it was bad, when I first got out of rehab I went twice a day sometimes. I stopped in to one when I went for a run on Thursday but I missed yesterday and I’m feeling a little untethered…with everything.” he gestured vaguely around the room. Betty grabbed his jacket from the chair and ushered him to the door. He left with a promise to be back in a couple of hours with lunch. 

Now she was alone, she set her mind to trying to figure out the authors of their current predicament. Alice had told her that Charles had been shot in the washroom of his building at Quantico. That was not a space that just anyone could wander into. And Charles was alive which meant that the person who’d shot him was not, and had likely never been, a field agent. A field agent would have made sure of the kill, probably double tap to the torso and one to the head. Charles had been shot at close range in the chest suggesting a shooter with limited firearms experience who lacked the dispassionate focus to shoot their victim in the head. They’d maybe been shocked by the weapon’s noise and taken one shot and run. So certainly not a field agent. While Betty had seen Supreme Court judges and Congressmen and women at Quantico they would never be permitted to wander the halls without a security detail. It was hard to imagine that a security officer would stand aside and let a Senator shoot an FBI Assistant Director while he stood at a urinal. They’d either stop them or do the deed more professionally for them depending on their loyalty and remuneration. So not a politician or a judge. By a process of elimination that left analysts and data crunchers. They’d have to be pretty senior to have access to an executive bathroom and they’d need good security clearance to even be on that floor. An assistant or executive director in one of the science and IT departments. That seemed like the most logical possibility unless Tom Cruise had been lowered from from a helicopter on a titanium wire wearing a perfect replica of the President’s face or some similar Hollywood bullcrap. More likely her half brother had been shot by someone who had a relatively senior position in the FBI and who must have a great deal to lose. The FBI had a glass ceiling, one that Betty had long been determined to throw a brick through, but which meant the assailant was almost certainly male. They were trying to sabotage an investigation into the trafficking of underage girls from Chechnya and Azerbaijan for work in the sex industry. Occam’s Razor would suggest that rather than looking for a Gordian knot of complex motivations it was simply more likely that there was a senior, male, technical FBI director who liked to sexually abuse little girls and didn’t want his pension to go bye-bye when he was exposed as a total piece of shit.

Now she felt like she had a better handle on what they were dealing with she had phone calls to make. As she placed the calls she wished that she could take the meeting with Timur rather than Jughead. She had the skills to try to get him to tip his hand, reveal exactly who was leaking the identities of FBI agents like her to criminal gangs. She would be able to get him to give away more than he realised, maybe confirm her suspicions. Unfortunately though the fact was that he knew her and, if he saw her again, he would simply kill her. If she was lucky she’d get the professional kill that Charles’ assailant had failed to deliver, if she was unlucky her death would be much, much worse. So she couldn’t meet him and she would, against all her instincts, have to leave it to poor, damaged Jughead who, at this moment, was sharing his feelings in a room full of strangers because he had turned to the bottle when his girlfriend left him.

Instantly she felt ashamed of herself. She knew that he had been so strong to seek help. To be vulnerable now in a group would take everything that he had. And she hadn’t just left him. She had made him believe that the most important relationship he had ever had was a lie. She had ripped the earth out from under his feet and left him falling. Now he was reaching out to her, prepared to let her break him again if she chose. That was Jughead. He would always take a blow for the people he loved. She hadn’t even been able to tolerate watching what he was prepared to endure for her. He was the really strong one because he could absorb the blow and not return it. The power to suffer without retaliating and to withstand pain without losing the ability to trust and hope was rare thing.

Soon the door lock clicked and Jughead was back with a package of lobster rolls and sodas. He threw the wrapped sandwich to her as she sat with her back against the headboard and then placed the bag on the floor with a clinking sound that set off alarm bells in her head. “Good meeting?”

“Yeah. Lot of talk about stress triggers. And I didn’t mention the kidnapping of my oldest friend or the imminent meeting with a mobster.” He was trying to make light of it with trademark sardonic humour but it really wasn’t funny.

“Jug, I’m risking your life here. Am I risking your recovery too?” That bag had definitely clinked when he put it down.

He put a hand out to touch her arm and then withdrew it. “You have to stop feeling responsible for me Betty. It’s my recovery. The fact is that I’m an alcoholic and I have to be careful when anything, good or bad, happens in my life. I have to eat well, keep healthy, not let myself get too much in my own head, talk to people and ask for help. It sucks that they’re all things that I would have shunned in the past but I don’t want to be what I was thirteen months ago so I have to suck it up. And if it’s too much then you need to know that you can walk away from it, no hard feelings.”

She felt shocked by that. She wanted him to need her. She wanted to be like oxygen for him but she wasn’t. He’d survived without her, just barely, but he had. He saw it on her face and his brows knitted together, jaw jutting out. “Hey, you left me. You said you wanted me to be happy without you. But you didn’t really, did you? What did you want? For Veronica or my dad to plead with you to come back to me? Or maybe you wanted me to just kill myself and be done with it. Did you want me dead Betty?”

“No,” she howled, “Of course not. Never.”

“But you want to be the only one that can save me. Want me to depend on you. You have to be the saviour don’t you? Saving those girls, saving Archie. It’s all about how great you are isn’t it? I really fucking want you, God help me, but I don’t need you Betty. If you want to walk when this is done then I’ll be fine. Two meetings a day for a while but I’ll get there.” He was yelling now, his face white with anger. How the hell had they got here?


	4. Everyone's Going To Need A Little Backup In Case The Scene Gets Nasty

Ninety minutes later Jughead was standing by the railing on the pedestrian walkway of the Williamsburg Bridge. He’d chosen the location because he knew it well. He’d crossed it twice a day when he and Betty lived in Brooklyn and he worked at the magazine in Tribeca. He’d hurried across in the morning because he’d been unable to resist making love to her before he left and it made him late. He’d rushed back across in the evening because he wanted to make sure she ate before she collapsed into bed, exhausted from working corporate cases at the field office in Lower Manhattan. His life had, now he looked back at it, revolved around her. She would ask about his day but he felt embarrassed that he was writing reviews of restaurants while she was making the world safe for democracy or something. It wasn't the work he'd imagined he'd be doing but they couldn't both be as driven as Betty.

So he knew the bridge, it was public and he’d be able to see danger approaching as long as he kept his focus. He was wearing the serpent jacket and he had the last two inches of scotch sloshing around in a bottle in his pocket. He’d spilled some on his T shirt and he could smell it all the time. He had left the beanie behind. It made him feel safer but it also made him look younger and he wanted Timur to see that he wasn’t a kid.

He saw him approaching. He could have picked him out of a crowd anywhere just by his physical type. He was a big guy with a barrel chest, short hair and a beard. There was a tattoo of a cat on his neck. When he recognised the serpent on Jughead’s jacket he stopped alongside him and looked down into the East River, leaning on the barrier. “You have a trade for me?” There was an accent but he spoke good English. Jughead was relieved. He’d been worried about that.

Jughead knew his life depended on bravado and he summoned it from the dumbass kid he had been when he was the Serpent King and had no clue about anything.  
“Yeah, I have a certain blonde FBI agent that you want. You have Archie Andrews. Let’s deal.”

“I read a file about you Snake. She was your woman. Why would you give her up? It is a trick.” The cat tattoo was cartoonish, grinning, and somehow that made him so much more sinister but the fact that he had access to a background check meant that Betty had been right. There must be an FBI insider in the mix.

“If you read it you know she left me. Look at me. Look what she made me. I was the Serpent King but she persuaded me to give it up and break my oath. Then she wanted an educated man so I got a college degree but that wasn't enough either so now I’m a drunk with nothing. I live in Andrew’s house on his charity. Also I am the godfather to his sons. I've promised to protect them. I won’t break another oath for that bitch. She ruined me. You can do what you want with her. I’ll watch if you let me.” Jughead took a step nearer and he knew that the other man could smell the booze on him.

“Where is she?”

“Oh no no no my friend. Give me Andrews first. I have no reason to trust your word. We are not brothers.”

“Indeed not. It seems that we have a stalemate.”

“No, I have a solution. You release Andrews and take me in his place. I’ll make her come to you.”

“Why would she put herself into check for you? You are not of equal value with him. She left you. He is her childhood friend. Maybe he is more than a friend." Timur smirked mockingly at his joke but Jughead simply gave a direct and unflinching gaze.

“Because the stupid whore thinks that I’m in love with her. She thinks I’ll take her back and marry her. She thinks I want to give her children. You know that’s what women really want. She has played her games and now she thinks she can have me back but I have my pride. What kind of man would I be if I came when she called me, after what she did to me?”

The Chechen looked at him with growing respect. He could see the Serpent King begin to emerge from the sad, drunken man before him. “Then we must walk. Come” Jughead concealed his jubilation and the two men walked alongside each other back the way that Jughead had come. Soon they were descending the slope back into Brooklyn along the caged walkway. As they approached the road the Chechen made a gesture in the air and a mini van pulled out of a side street and screeched to a halt in the nearest lane, causing other drivers to swerve and honk their horns in fury. A door slid open and Archie was shoved out onto the road. His wrists were raw where he had been bound and he was disorientated but then he saw Jughead and rushed towards him. The two men embraced briefly but then the Chechen nodded towards the open door of the van and Jughead pushed Archie away to climb aboard.

“Jug, Jughead. What’s going on? What have you done?” Archie was yelling, trying to stop the door closing to climb back into captivity but Jug shook his head at him decisively.

“Arch, get home to Veronica and the babies. She needs you. I’ve got this.” Archie hung his head but took a step back. Maybe fatherhood had taught him when to pull the punches.

The van peeled out into traffic, leaving Archie staring after it. Jughead though he saw the realisation dawn that he should be memorising the licence plate and saw his friend squinting to make it out. He felt a rush of affection and then sympathy as he imagined Veronica yelling , “You didn’t get the licence plate Archie? Are there rocks in your head? Sometimes… I swear.”

As the driver wove through New York traffic Jughead tried to calculate their destination. They weren’t crossing over into Manhattan, here was Flushing Avenue, maybe Red Hook? Suddenly he was aware that Timur was bringing up a contact list on his cellphone and Jughead tried to work out the other side of the conversation from what he could hear. “I’ve got the Serpent. He says he can make her come to us. You want we do it now?… We can just do it….She knows client list….Fine…Warehouse in…”

Timur turned to Jughead, “How long before you get her to us?”

“Depends where we’re headed man.” Jughead shrugged.

He may have felt a little smug when the other man said “Red Hook.”

“An hour, maybe 90 minutes? She's on foot.”

Timur relayed this on the phone and hung up. “Your boss?” queried Jughead deciding that a little provocation might get the other man to give up more information.

“I am the boss,” Timur asserted with wounded pride. “This man has a common interest and he will pay to have me help him. I take his money but he does not buy me. He is not like us. He is a man without honour. The Russians used to call such men apparatchik. You know this word?” Of course the Columbia graduate in comparative literature knew the word “apparatchik.” He’d read his Solzhenitsyn as carefully as the next man. Actually, given that the next man was a Chechen gangster with a cat neck tattoo, he felt pretty confident that he had read it more carefully. He made a blank face and shook his head.

“He is bureaucrat, government man. He just works for his salary, to collect his pension. He is fearful but he still likes little girls so he has to be careful. He is not really a man at all. But he is frightened so he needs to know what she knows and who she has told and then he needs her dead.”

They pulled up outside one of the old Red Hook warehouses and Timur gestured to Jughead to enter first. Despite the precarious situation he was in he was beginning to feel aggrieved at how cordial the mobster was being. If Timur thought they were cut from the same cloth he was mistaken. Of course Jughead could console himself that it was likely that the gangster was planning to shoot him in the head as soon as Betty arrived and at least he wasn’t being a dick about it.

“Now you bring her.” Jughead took out his cell and called the burner number that Betty had programmed in. He composed himself for the call, he needed to be convincing. “Liz,” he croaked, making his voice sound tremulous, “It’s me.”

“Forsythe?” Betty screamed down the line, “Where are you darling? Where did you go? Are you OK?”

“I got Archie out and I gave them the slip but Lizzy I’m hurt. I can’t get back to you. Come and get me baby. I need you.”

Betty seemed almost hysterical and Jughead was sure that Timur could hear her voice spilling from the handset even as he gave her directions. Finally he groaned and ended the call in a way designed to cause panic. Now he just had to hope that Timur wouldn’t be too quick off the mark with an Chechen military-style execution. They sat, smoking, in reasonably companionable silence on some old wooden crates in the corner of the warehouse until, forty minutes later, a twitchy man in a crumpled grey suit slipped through the doorway. He had dark circles under his eyes and his hair was uncombed. It was quite clear that he was unravelling fast. He approached Timur and Jughead looking from one to the other and clearly feeling like a Sunday school teacher at a biker bar.

“This the apparatchik?” Jughead chuckled. Timur nodded with a slight smile. There were four other Chechens outside in the van, a mob boss and an ex Serpent King inside and this guy was definitely bringing a banana to an AK47 fight. Jughead reminded himself that despite his feeble appearance he had the balls to shoot his half brother in the middle of an FBI building but the fact that he had done it while Charles was taking a piss seemed to obliterate any criminal kudos that act could have earned.

“Is she here? When’s she getting here? Do you know what she knows?”

Jughead looked at him appraisingly before answering in sequence. “Doesn’t look like she’s here, unless she’s in one of the packing cases. She’s on her way and she’s hurrying because she thinks I might be dying. I don’t think anyone really knows what she knows so you’ll just have to ask her nicely before you kill her.”

Twitcher blanched at that and perched on the edge of a case and pulled at a hangnail in sullen silence. It was almost companionable but Jughead was fighting a steadily rising tide of tension. He was prepared for something but the stunning explosion from outside still shocked him into near panic. Before the three men had even got to their feet the whole space was filled with acrid smoke. Timur began to shoot wildly with the semi automatic weapon he had been cradling but Jughead was already on the floor on his belly. He’d marked the position of a roll up door when they had entered the space and he negotiated his way to it, slithering while noting the irony and praying that it would open. There was a great deal more gunfire and a scream before Jug was under the door and out, eyes streaming, gasping for breath, but out. He leaned against the wall and saw that he was surrounded by burning wreckage. Betty had clearly decided on overkill with regard to the hoods in the van. It was atomised into so much burning shrapnel. He loved a woman who didn't fuck about. He was coughing too much to wonder where she had acquired a rocket launcher but that was the only thing he could imagine could do the job. He placed his hands on his knees to do a more thorough job of hacking up a lung when he felt an arm around his shoulders.

“You alright boy?” He looked up through blurred eyes into his dad’s concerned face. 

After the sirens, the ambulances, the police station, the hospital and the FBI interrogation room, Jughead found himself in a bland, anonymous waiting room at the FBI headquarters in Lower Manhattan where Betty had begun her career. There was a vase of ugly, flesh coloured silk flowers, a painting of a beach which was so insipid that looking at it seemed to suck thought from his head and a sofa in a shade of beige that made him consider bleeding on it to liven it up. For the past three months he had made a modest living by proof reading corporate publicity material and press releases. Mission statements were the worst, so much verbiage concealing the total absence of content. He entertained himself by imagining the name of the design firm responsible for this room. He had chosen “Pabulum Inc” and was considering their mission statement for the firm when, finally, the door opened and Betty darted in. She looked him up and down briefly as if he were an item on an inventory that she had to check before accepting delivery and then she ran to him and clutched him like a limpet. He was just trying to calculate how possible it would be to go about his business for say the next fifty or so years with a Betty attached to his body when he realised that she was crying.

“Hey, hey. What’s this? It worked. We’re fine. No-one lost to friendly fire, GI Jane. Come on now. All OK.” He was stroking her hair as he moved them over to the couch and pulled her onto his lap. She sobbed into his chest until his shirt was soaked and he let her cry it out. He understood. It was fine when you were the one in danger but when someone you cared about was facing peril suddenly it got far too real. He'd been there and he knew how ghastly it was. When his dad eventually joined them she managed to stop crying and smile weakly at him. Then Sweetpea and Fangs were there too. Then the room began to fill with Serpents and finally Ms Veronica Lodge-Andrews pushed her way in with a group of guys Jughead didn't recognise but who he would have avoided in a bar back when there were bars in his life. Betty really did know how to pull together a SWAT team but Jughead was little surprised that this one included a woman who had only recently given birth…to twins. Betty saw his confusion and whispered, “V used her Dad’s old address book and called in some favours. He had some useful contacts." Suddenly there was a look of yearning in her eyes. "They had anti-tank missiles.” Only Betty talked about heavy armaments like other girls talked about shoes. It was very sexy.

The plan had worked better than they could have hoped. He'd strategised, she'd used her contacts, persuasion and planning to execute it. Betty had been assembling the A Team while Jug prepared himself to reel in Timur, writing himself a character that would gain the gang leader's trust. The most onerous thing had been to pour scotch down his shirt before flushing most of the rest of the bottle down the toilet. Knowing he would be breathing it in made him feel nervous but he had been tried and come through the test without a drop passing his lips. Once he was ready to go they decided on a code for the call they knew he would have to make if he was able to persuade Timur to the exchange. If he called her Liz she'd know that he had things under control. If he called her Betty she would know he was in immediate danger. She was to respond with “Forsythe” if the team was prepared and Jughead if he needed to stall for time.

They’d had to improvise, of course, because they didn’t know where Jug would be taken but Betty was of the opinion that a girl in possession of an anti-tank missile and a dozen experienced personnel was generally assured the win. FP had been in uniform, so he had approached the van, showing his badge and, as expected, the goons had drawn their automatic weapons. They probably hadn't had time to regret that choice because Gianluca, one of Hiram's old allies, had launched a frankly ostentatious missile which effectively neutralised the threat. Betty found the best positions for her squad to drop in smoke grenades and CS gas canisters. Timur’s wild firing had taken out the apparatchik or, as he was generally known, Assistant Director Reynolds and by the time the Chechen had stumbled to the doorway, blinded and suffocating, there were six members of some of the most feared New York crime families there to discuss his kidnapping of Hiram Lodge’s son-in-law.

Of course one cannot set off heavy artillery in one of the five boroughs these days without having to have a serious conversation with NYC’s finest who were soon on the scene. Betty had needed some alone time with the most senior FBI directors that she had ever met but, once Reynold’s home had been searched and the three Azerbaijani teenagers discovered in the cellar, they were much more understanding. Betty said that hints had been dropped that she could expect rapid promotion but Jughead noticed that she did not look particularly excited at the prospect.

The fellowship broke up gradually after a drink at an Irish bar a few blocks over, Veronica swooping back home for the seven o’clock feed, Serpents heading back upstate in a roar of motorbike engines, FP rushing to La Guardia in a yellow cab to get a flight back to Alice and Charles, Gianluca and the guys drifting silently away into the night, one by one. Betty felt anxious that Jughead was in a bar after the day he had had but he smiled to reassure her and drank a coke while inhaling three burgers, one after another. Finally they were alone. They hadn't talked properly since their fight over lunch but Betty couldn't face an emotional autopsy after the terror she'd been in all afternoon at the though of losing him. She wanted to ignore the elephant in the room a little longer and hoped he would indulge her. “V invited us to their place. Shall we go, just for tonight?” she suggested, “Like old times, before everything got so complicated.” and so they went, to be with Archie and Veronica and the babies and forget the trauma of the day and to avoid thinking about what all of this meant. Just for a night.


	5. If I Think Things Through Long Enough And Hard Enough I'll Somehow Get To You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, the last proper chapter. There’s a little epilogue after it before we leave these two to get on with their lives. Thanks to the kind people who showed appreciation for this little story. I’m really grateful.

It was a good night. As soon as Veronica buzzed them into the apartment they were in a bubble of Lodge-Andrews hospitality. Archie thrust sodas into their hands and led them through to the huge family room where V was reclining on a sofa holding a sleeping infant, looking like a Park Avenue Madonna. Jughead was still trying to reassure Archie that he wouldn’t mind if they wanted a “real” drink. Veronica blew out an explosive breath at this. “Jones, I am not going to put booze into the food chain for mes enfants and if I can’t have a drink ain't nobody having a drink here. It’s not always all about you you know.”

It was a gift that Veronica had, to be completely direct, while also putting everyone at ease. Betty knew her friend was curious about the dynamics between her and Jughead but when she quirked a curious eyebrow Betty gave a tiny shake of the head. She didn’t know yet what they were and it was too fragile a blossom to endure any shaking for now. Veronica was wise enough to leave it alone and dear Archie was oblivious to any unresolved tension.

Betty and Jug had recounted the events of the last few days in more detail than Betty had time to give earlier then Archie had recounted what he could remember of his own experience, which was not much at all apparently having been chloroformed in the garage and kept semi-conscious until he found himself in Brooklyn that afternoon. Finally the conversation drifted to reminiscences of high school and the whereabouts of their classmates. Veronica was the gossip guru and was able to inform them that Ethel was newly married to a French Michelin starred chef who she had met while taking his Cordon Bleu course in Paris last year. Apparently she was writing a cookery book with him and it was rumoured among those in the know that there would be a TV series to follow. Cheryl and Toni were regular visitors to the penthouse. They were a power couple, reviving the fortunes of Blossom Maple with savvy investments and HBIC energy. It was a booming industry which promised to get Riverdale back on its feet.

When Veronica made a move to put the babies down for the night Betty went with her knowing that V was practically exploding with curiosity. “So what's with you and Mr Existential Angst. Are all systems go again?”

“I don’t know. I made such a terrible mistake V. He’s got himself back on his feet. What if it doesn’t work? Or maybe he just doesn’t want me back. And what about my job? We couldn’t work it out last time so why would it be different now?”

“But you didn’t try to work it out, did you? You weren’t going give up the job and you weren’t going to let him live with that, so you decided to bail. That's not a relationship Betty, that's a dictatorship. I don’t know what that a compromise would look like, but you don’t get to make all the decisions yourself, especially not with someone like him. You'll have to work out what you're willing to give up if you want him. He's always loved you, certainly since I have known you. There’s no reason to think he’s stopped now. Oh, and should I have made up two beds? I wasn’t sure.”

“One is fine, thank you V.” Betty couldn’t get the smile off her face as she replied and Veronica started to chuckle quietly at the happiness on her friend’s face.

That night, she tried to push her dilemma to the back of her mind as they made love. They giggled as they tried to be quiet, out of respect to their hosts, but there was no way they could lie chastely next to each other like marble effigies on a tomb. He was so gentle as he touched her, his hands moving over her like water over river rocks. She sighed as he placed his hands on her breasts and then caught her breath as his lips followed. He stroked and kissed her hypnotically until she lost all sense of time and place and then he slowly entered her and he was like the tide on the beach, approaching and withdrawing again and again until she couldn’t bear the need that had been building in her and she whispered to him to turn onto his back. Now she could set a faster pace and she loved to see him struggle to hold in his moans as he neared his goal. Eventually he lost the battle and groaned “Oh Betty yes,” as he came and she abandoned all self control and slammed against him as he pulled on her hair. It was like falling but knowing that she was absolutely safe. She could never get enough of him. She wanted this, him, a home, a future but she didn’t know how to get it without losing herself and that made the tears spring up in her eyes as she lay against his shoulder and her heart rate slowed and she slept.

The next morning, as they lay together listening to the crying of babies and the soft sounds of young parents comforting them, Jughead broached the subject. “So, Special Agent Betty, what’s next?”

She turned so that she could look into his eyes and ask her question. “If I resign today, will you take me back?”

His eyes looked so deeply into hers for so long that she began to feel afraid, and then he said “No.”

The word fell like a blow to her throat and she had to sit up and get her feet on the floor. She doubled over and tried to breathe through it. There was no way she could dissemble. She was in agony and she couldn’t hide it from him. She'd shot her shot and missed. She'd lost him and it was all her own fault. But then he was kneeling behind her, his arms around her shoulders, holding her as she drew in shallow gasps. “Breathe my love, breathe. It’s OK. You’ll be OK. Breathe.” As the lightheadedness began to recede she was able to recover herself a little.

“Sorry Jug. Bit hysterical there. No, of course not. I’m sorry to have asked. Not what you need at all. God, how stupid.”

“Betty it’s not stupid at all and you have no idea how much I want to say yes. But I’ve had to learn how to say no to things that I want if they are going to go bad. If you resign today what's going to happen then? You need to work. I can’t be everything to you, you’re like a goddamn supernova. I can’t contain you, I’ll burn up and then where will you be? You said you were addicted to the job, that it was all consuming and that isn’t healthy. So you need to deal with that. If you can find a way to have the work that you need and still have space for me, for a life outside…for a family, then I want that with you. We can’t be these broken people who need the other to survive, clinging together because we have no choice. I want us to be two complete human beings who choose each other, every day, for the rest of our lives.”

“But what if you find someone else? What if you move on?” she sobbed against his shoulder.

“Will you meet someone else? Is there someone for you other than me? I don’t know. I hope not but it’s a leap of faith. If we can make it work we’ll get back to each other somehow. But let's not destroy each other to do it.”

She was bereft but she knew she didn’t deserve him and she wasn’t about to make him feel bad about his decision so she smiled at him weakly and nodded. After breakfast he kissed her forehead before heading out with Archie to fetch his bike and she booked a train ticket to DC and packed her things as V hovered around her anxiously. It felt terribly final and yet completely unresolved.

FP and Alice were staying in her apartment in Columbia Heights so they could be near Charles so she unlocked the door to the aroma of Alice’s displacement activity homemaking. She could smell the beeswax polish and fabric softener that transported her back to her childhood and it made her clench her fists with the anxiety that she'd imagined she'd left behind years ago. The apartment hadn’t been dirty, she knew, but it was unoccupied most of the time and had probably felt damp and unloved. Her phone call from the train had ensured that there was a bouquet of fresh flowers on the hall table with a note propped against it. “We are at the hospital until 6. There’s leftovers in the refrigerator. Welcome home.” As Betty slid down the closed front door, to collapse onto the carpet in a pool of tears and remorse, she could not have felt less welcome in her old life.

Eventually she pulled herself together enough to make a cup of tea and unpack her bag. She put on a pair of pyjamas and sat on the sofa with her phone. She fought herself for twenty minutes before caving in and texting him. “Are you back safe? I miss you.” Then immediately “I want you.”

Delivered, read and typing notifications pinged hard against each other and she watched in anticipation. “Back safe. I’m writing! Be well.” followed by, “I want you to want me.”

She dozed on the sofa as Hallmark movies on TV mocked her with easily resolved romantic misunderstandings until F.P. and Alice returned looking pale with stress. They had nothing to report on Charles’ condition. After a subdued supper she went to bed and lay, looking up at the ceiling, until it was time to get up and dress.

At work Betty arranged a meeting with the acting director covering Charles’ job. Without a plan, she requested all her outstanding leave. She would at least have time for the uncomfortable moral audit and to see if she could live without the sense of purpose that her work had supplied. Given that her half brother had been shot in the line of duty, the request was nodded through despite the lack of notice. Two months stretched in front of her with nothing to fill it, a whole summer. Other young professional women would call up their girlfriends and take off for Cancun or Florida but she had no-one to call except Veronica. Unfortunately for her and fortunately for Veronica her friend had actually made a proper human life for herself with relationships and responsibilities and a web of connections to the world. She had nothing like that.

She drifted to the hospital and sat by Charles’ bedside while her mother went to eat lunch. The nurse told her that it was good to talk to coma patients, that no-one knew what they might hear and what might encourage them to keep fighting so she told him that she was lost and alone and she didn’t know how to get back to where she needed to be. She told him that Jughead was her home and she didn’t know if she would ever be allowed to return and she told him that she thought that she needed to leave the bureau and find another, better way to live. Charles was a good listener.

Betty spent the next two weeks going for runs, taking yoga classes, having her hair styled, getting mani-pedis, browsing bookshops, visiting Charles, cooking for Alice and FP and trying not to call Jughead. She filled the days but it felt like waiting. She kept hoping that she would suddenly know how she could fix her life but she just couldn’t work out how to get all the pieces of the jigsaw to fit together. She seemed to have twenty corners and no middle section. Then, when she was seriously considering cutting her leave short and going back to work, Charles woke up. He was groggy and confused and he’d lost a couple of weeks that he just couldn't remember before the attack but the doctors were hopeful that he would recover fully. Betty was pleased that he was getting better and, even more pleased, to her shame, that she had a perfectly legitimate reason to speak to Jug.

She called to tell him the good news and he answered breathless, out on a run. He was delighted and asked the appropriate questions but she was aware of an undertow in their conversation. She sensed that he wanted to ask what she was going to do with her life and she still didn’t know. She asked about his writing instead. “I’m doing an investigative piece on trafficking. I'm starting with Archie's kidnapping and then tracing the roots of it back to the girls themselves, their stories. Obviously I'll keep your name out of it. There’s been some interest from the New York Times. They haven’t paid me anything yet but it seems like it might be worth finishing it up. I’ll send it to you when it’s done if you like. You can give it a rough edit. It’s so long since I wrote non-fiction but I’m really getting into it.” She was excited to hear him sound so much like his old self, enthusiastic and focused so she told him that she was looking forward to helping and suggesting and he laughed in recollection of their earliest collaborations.

She got back to her apartment that afternoon after her spin class to find FP and Alice packing. They had been given the all-clear to get Charles transferred to Riverdale General and then to Elm Street to recuperate. Alone in the apartment after they had driven away she stared into space for ten minutes feeling bereft and lost as if she were the last remaining astronaut on the space station watching the supply vessel silently move away into emptiness. This wouldn't do at all so she hurried into the bedroom, packed a bag and called an Uber to take her to the train station. She was on the train before she let herself recognise that it was not the mark of a healthy person that she couldn't spend fifteen minutes alone in her own apartment without fleeing. She'd taken time off to find herself and what she found was someone who would rather face a fire fight with a drug cartel than an evening of me time. She called V from the train and was relieved that she sounded pleased that her old friend was going to impose on her hospitality again rather than exasperated by this needy, clinging person who couldn't get her shit together. It was in New York though that she suddenly felt more herself. The city seemed to embrace her. Staying with Archie and Veronica in the lap of luxury didn't hurt but even in the everyday things she felt like a person she wanted to be. She ran through Central Park in the early morning as dogs ran excitedly after each other before they had to be put back on the leash at 9 a.m., past carts selling soft pretzels, the doughy aroma mingling with the smell of bacon from every bakery and coffee shop. Later she and Veronica pushed the double buggy on shopping expeditions to boutiques that smelled of Chanel and money. In the evening she cooked pasta or meatloaf for them all and babysat when mommy and daddy went out for dinner and a movie for the first time since the birth. She explored vintage shops and bought clothes that an FBI agent could never wear, tried out hot yoga and even smoked weed with Archie, outside on the balcony at V's insistence since the air of "les enfants" was sacrosanct. She felt like she could move freely for the first time in too long. Before long she had made a decision; she knew that whatever she was going to do, it was going to be in NYC baby.

As the clock ran down on her leave she decided to check in on the family in Riverdale. She wanted to talk to FP, Alice and Charles about the decision she had almost made to resign from the Bureau and look for work in New York, maybe with a private investigation firm or in forensic accountancy. She borrowed Archie’s car and didn’t bother to call ahead, planning to make it a road trip and stop on the way if she felt inclined.

After a relaxing, two day stay in a cute bed and breakfast in a place on the banks of the Hudson, where the owner’s Labrador had taken a shine to her and she had been allowed to take it on long walks through the woods as they turned to gold, she finally pulled up outside her childhood home as dusk turned to night. She noticed that the light was on in the garage, the overhead door slightly raised. She assumed FP was in there but there was no sign of the cruiser. She reached down and pulled on the door and it rolled into its housing. There was Jughead and Pop Tate, sitting on lawn chairs in her Mom’s garage, each holding a coke with a greasy bag of onion rings ripped open on a third chair between them. She couldn’t say if the scene was Norman Rockwell or Edward Hopper. Pop was wearing his soda jerk uniform with an astrakhan coat over the top and Jughead was in a sherpa and beanie looking more himself than ever. Betty’s confusion must have been obvious and before she had politely hidden her curiosity she had blurted out, “Hi Jug, Pop. What’re you doing out here?”

Jug looked confused and almost embarrassed by the question and made an uncertain sound in his throat, almost a cough, almost a laugh. Pop raised an eyebrow at him, “You mind Jughead?”

“No, not at all. Betty knows all about me.”

Pop smiled up at Betty from his seat and explained. “Well Betty. I’m Jughead’s sponsor in AA and we’re here, shooting the breeze about life and love and booze and being as good of men as we can manage each day.”

Betty's mouth hung open in surprise but eventually she found her voice “But Pop. You’re in AA? I had no idea.”

Jug laughed heartily. “Well good. It’s not Alcoholics Advertised is it?”

Betty flushed and smiled as she realised the foolishness of her comment but Pop just smiled at her benevolently and made his declaration. “I’m Terence and I’m an alcoholic. I’ve been sober for fifty one years and eight months.”

“How…?” Betty was still having trouble with her words. Jughead grabbed another lawn chair from the pile against the wall and opened it out and patted the seat for her and Pop reached into a holdall by his chair and handed her a soda.

“May as well sit if you’re going to hear the whole story,” he smiled at her comfortably before continuing his narrative. “I was eighteen when I was sent to Vietnam. I’d never been out of Riverdale before and that year tested me to my limit. I saw things and did things in country that I couldn’t find it in myself to live with and then they sent me home to pick up my life. I didn’t do so well at that, but I found that a drink would let me get some sleep and I wouldn’t have to dream about it anymore. But then the cure caused more problems that it solved. One day when I was just married I lost my temper with my Clara and, God forgive me, I raised my hand to her. If I had struck her I would have cut that hand off but I came to my senses in time and I knew, right then, that I had to change my ways. I started going to meetings and I haven’t taken the first drink yet and I try to keep on doing that each day. When I see someone in town who’s fighting the same fight I try to help, whether it’s giving an ex-con a job at the Choc Lit Shoppe,” and here he smiled at Jug, “or taking a young man aside when it seemed like he’d fallen about as low as he can go and offering him a hand up by taking him along to a meeting.”

It hadn’t made any sense before that a stern talking to by Pop would have persuaded Jug to go to rehab but now it was clear that his timely intervention had probably saved Jug’s life. Betty felt such gratitude and tenderness towards the old man that she took his hand between hers and looked at him earnestly. “Pop, I can’t thank you enough for what you've done. I'll always be grateful to you for helping him.”

‘Well Betty, just like I wanted to be worthy of my Clara, God rest her soul, I think Mr Jones here would like to be worthy of you so maybe you are a help to him too.”

Betty smiled at Pop ruefully. “It’s me that needs to be worthy of him Pop, but thank you for that.”

Later that night, as she lay in her old bed, she felt the mattress sink beside her and two strong arms pull her into an embrace. It was only then that she really felt that she had come home.

While both Jughead and Betty had come home to see Charles as he recuperated they found it impossible to tear themselves away from each other. Jug was still writing his article. The Times had now officially commissioned it so he was writing to a deadline. Betty loved the way he drew the reader in with the abduction angle and then subtly challenged them with the fact that the plight of a rich white man could get their attention while the desperate lives of trafficked girls from places spelled with too many consonants was brushed aside without notice. She soon found herself collaborating, removing those pesky semi-colons and fact checking when Jug allowed his more imaginative bent too free a rein. He would question her, prodding her for how the girls sounded when they arrived, how the vans that they were loaded into smelt and getting her to develop the narrative from a disinterested report to a moving story that would engage the empathy of a reader. She could not remember being more engrossed in any task, even her undercover assignments, and now there was the added benefit of being able to sneak glances at his strong forearms poised over the keyboard, tanned from a summer at the lake house, or his taut chest muscles when they returned from a run together and he tugged his shirt over his head to wipe the sweat from his torso. They slept in the same bed but he hadn’t made love to her, simply holding her to him all night. She wanted him in every way but she knew he was waiting to see what she would do next and she didn’t push things. There was time.

Eventually the piece was finished and they went to Pop’s to celebrate the accomplishment over milkshakes just as they had done as kids after The Blue and Gold went to press. They took the laptop so that they could press send on the email and see their hard work swoop away to its destiny and as they did so they whooped. She called him Ronan Farrow and he called her Carl Bernstein and they laughed like kids. Pop came over with an order of onion rings on the house. “It’s wonderful to see two people who the Lord has given gifts that fit together so they can do great work. What’s the next story going to be about?”

Betty and Jughead looked at each other as she realised that the work she had been looking for was right next to her all along. The path ahead of her was illuminated for the first time in years and it was a path she was excited to take. He would find some example of injustice, she would investigate and infiltrate. He would write it up, she would moderate his tendency to hyperbole and conspiracy theory. They would win Pulitzers and write books and expose injustice. She reached out and put her hands on Jug’s face and kissed him and he kissed her back.


	6. Epilogue

Two years later…

Betty feels exhausted but then she feels exhausted all the time these days. The latest book is finally finished and Jug is delivering the proofed galleys to the publisher in the city. She’s working on the next project on her own today but it seems pretty close to ready too. She could sleep for a week. At least it’s cool out here on the porch. She was a little reluctant to move out to the ‘burbs but there’s so much more space here and she can be in Manhattan in under an hour so it was a no-brainer really. There are still some boxes to unpack but Jug is going to have to deal with them because she is too lazy and too stupid to do anything except sit on their swing set and idly play with Dashiell’s silky spaniel ears as he growls in his sleep.  
Eventually she hears the station wagon pull onto the drive and she manages to raise her head in greeting as Jug jogs up the steps, shouts “Thar she blows!” and scoops up Dash so he can sit on the swing next to her with the dog in his lap. "Sorry I'm late. I stopped into a meeting in the city so I wouldn't have to go out again."  
“It's OK. And are you implying that I am a whale?” Betty queries with mock indignation.  
“Arrrr” he replies bracing himself as she slaps his arm.  
“Just remember what happens to Ahab. Don’t push your luck.”  
“I harpooned you gooood” he laughs, giddy with happiness.  
“So crude. I hope you’ll be better behaved when little Terri is here.” and then, suddenly, she yelps and hoists herself upright.  
“What? What’s happening?” Jug stares at her in abject panic as she breathes deeply.  
“Contraction. They’ve been coming on all afternoon.”  
“Why didn’t you call me? How long? How far dilated are you? Do we need to go now?” He’s up now, poor Dashiell falling to the floor as he begins to jog around the porch, first towards the house, then back to his pregnant wife, then towards the station wagon in an agony of indecision. “Jug, calm down. There’s loads of time. It’s passed now.” And then, eyes wide, she stares at him as another wave hits and she growls, “Get the hospital bag from the closet and then get me into the car. Right the hell now.”


End file.
